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Tuesday, 20 May 2008

Beware the Framers!

This is a pencil and acrylic work on paper, of a few trees up at Mary Cairnscross Park at Maleny. If I remember correctly, this was taken from a small drawing I drew in pencil and an old tea bag on paper while having lunch with Roger (Roj) and Wendy. It was just after we moved to Beerwah and possibly just before they moved to Perth - but my memory could be a bit skew-wiff.

For the last 16 years or so it's been sitting in a frame: I pinched the frame for another work that was going in my 'as' show. It was the first Glasshouse Mountains area drawing that I framed. Unfortunately the framers at Caloundra used poor framing techniques and glued the whole picture to the backing board - very annoying. At least I can photograph it properly now without fighting with glare from the glass.

I had another work damaged in a similar way by a Brisbane framer - he used a backing board that seemed to be covered in a self-adhesive sheet. The main work is stuck down on this slowly deteriorating board and is impossible to remove. The problem is you don't find out until years later when you go to change frames or service the work. These days I ask as many questions of the framers as possible and if I get a weird response I look elsewhere. Fortunately, I now know two good framers who are honest, reliable and do a good job.

3 comments:

its a bad un-archival and evil thing for sure that these framers have done but there is a silver lining. Your art has a life of its own now - its not a static dead thing embalmed for what under a sheet of glass. Its living which means it is also dying. Embrace this as a positive thing, a motivation and inspiration to do some shoddy restoration on it. Its history grows and with that, its authority.Go the evil framer, hero of living paintings.

Yes, I know where your coming from Roj - remove the art from it's archive and let it be art. Now I feel like an Evil Framer and Bird Proofer. The bird proofer tries to stop the birds eating fruit of his trees by laying elaborate netting - sort of like framing a bit.